Standardized Assessment Instruments Flashcards

A Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist (CTRS) is working with a client who has recently had a stroke. The CTRS needs to select a standardized assessment instrument that measures the client's degree of independence in activities of daily living to help plan interventions. Which of the following assessments would be most appropriate?

Answer: Functional Independence Measure (FIM)

The Functional Independence Measure (FIM) is the most appropriate tool as it is specifically designed to assess a person's level of independence in activities of daily living, including areas like self-care, mobility, and cognition. The LDB focuses on perceived freedom in leisure, the GAF provides a subjective rating of overall psychological, social, and occupational functioning, and the LIS identifies leisure preferences, not functional independence.

When a standardized assessment demonstrates that it consistently produces stable and similar results over time when administered to the same client, it is said to have high:

Answer: Test-retest reliability

Test-retest reliability refers to the degree to which an assessment tool produces stable and consistent results over multiple administrations at different times. Validity ensures the test measures what it claims to measure, inter-rater reliability means different raters get similar results, and internal consistency refers to how well different items on a test measure the same construct.

The Leisure Diagnostic Battery (LDB) is a widely used assessment in therapeutic recreation. Its primary purpose is to measure a client's:

Answer: Perceived freedom in leisure and barriers to leisure

The Leisure Diagnostic Battery (LDB) was developed to assess an individual's 'leisure functioning,' which includes their perceptions of leisure, the degree of freedom they feel in leisure experiences, and the barriers they encounter. It does not primarily measure self-care abilities (like the FIM), overall psychological functioning (like the GAF), or simply list interests (like an interest survey).

A CTRS administers a standardized assessment to a client upon admission to a rehabilitation facility and then administers the same assessment prior to discharge. Why is this process important?

Answer: To evaluate changes in the client's status and measure program effectiveness

Administering the same standardized assessment at the beginning (baseline) and end of a treatment period is a key method for evaluating changes in the client's condition and measuring the effectiveness of the interventions provided. This process is known as re-assessment and is critical for demonstrating outcomes.

Which of the following BEST describes a norm-referenced standardized assessment?

Answer: An assessment where a client's scores are compared against the scores of a representative group of individuals with similar characteristics.

Norm-referenced assessments are designed to compare and rank a test taker's scores in relation to a specific, representative sample group (the 'norm group'). This differs from a criterion-referenced assessment, where performance is measured against a defined set of criteria.

The Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale, while formerly used in the DSM-IV, provides a single score to rate an individual's:

Answer: Social, occupational, and psychological functioning

The GAF scale is a numeric scale used to subjectively rate the social, occupational, and psychological functioning of an individual on a continuum from mental health to illness. It is not specific to leisure, physical skills, or locus of control.